FRANKFURT, Germany (AFP) – A self-confessed German cannibal was jailed for life yesterday after a court found him guilty of murder for killing and partly eating an allegedly willing victim he had met on the Internet.

At a retrial, the court in Frankfurt found that Armin Meiwes, known as the Cannibal of Rotenburg, slaughtered a man to satisfy his sexual urges.

The judge described Meiwes, who sliced off his victim’s penis while he was still conscious so they could eat it together, as “psychologically ill” but said he was responsible for his actions.

But the judge rejected the prosecution’s demand that Meiwes be disqualified from release after serving a minimum 15 years, meaning he may not spend the rest of his life behind bars.

He was originally convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in 2004.

Meiwes, 44, a smartly dressed computer technician, insisted throughout both trials that his victim had a death wish and had begged to be killed and eaten, saying it was the “ultimate kick” both of them were seeking. “He had wanted everything just the way it eventually happened,” he said last week.

Meiwes met Brandes, an engineer from Berlin, after advertising on the Internet for a “slaughter victim” and invited him to his rambling farm house.

The two men made a videotape of their fatal encounter. It showed them having sex, then Meiwes severing Brandes’ engorged penis, which the two men fried and tried to eat.

After a bleeding Brandes lost consciousness, Meiwes stabbed him in the throat and cut away other parts of his body.

He admitted he eventually ate some 20kg (44lb) of the flesh, with potatoes and a pepper or wine sauce, served on “good crockery”.